CUE provides some of the best professional development around. Hands down! Without a doubt, day 1 of the CUE Rock Star Black Label camp has not disappointed. This camp, in particular, is just for TOSA's, so it makes it extra special. It's always like a reunion at these events because there are so many people that I've met at other conferences and meetings, etc. There was also that awkward bit of people coming up this morning and saying "Hi!" and I had no idea who they were. So, if I gave you a strange look this morning, I'm sorry!

This morning I attended JR's session on automating your TOSA life. I'm pretty darn automation savvy and still I walked away with new ideas. I created a form to use with grade level teams when I meet with them to set goals for their individual differentiated PD day (I should blog about that soon). When you fill out the form, it automatically emails the meeting notes to the grade level team members and the principal. But wait! There's more. It also adds the follow-up PD day to my calendar automatically. But wait! There's more. It invites the team members to the event too, which means it's on their calendars too. Ok, there's no more now. ;) How cool is that? I'm excited to give it a try.

That wasn't the most exciting piece of the session though. Hard to believe, huh? Someone shared that you can use an IF recipe and geolocation to automatically send pictures taken in a specific geographic location to a folder on Google drive. How cool would it be to set up a recipe for each school site, take pictures at each school, and have them magically upload to the folder? And wouldn't it be cool if that folder just happened to be shared with the principal too? Automatic sharing with the tap of the camera button! I love stuff like that!!

Lunch was great and I enjoyed time chatting with folks from all over Southern California. We're at the StubHub arena (home of the LA Galaxy) and we went down to the field and maybe somewhere else where we maybe weren't supposed to go.

Thanks @peerlessgreen for taking our team photo!

We spent some time this afternoon exploring a new tool call Slack. It's a cool communication tool for teams. If you work closely with a team, check it out. Jon Corippo described it, at a glance, as Twitter meets Voxer. That sounds about right. And can I just say that it blows my mind that Jon Corippo knows my name? And Lisa Highfill too? They're like EdTech royalty.

This is what Slack looks like! It's a web app, downloadable application, iOS app and more.

In all seriousness, I love events like this. We meet new friends and old friends alike. I always leave with something new and am re-energized. And even though I won't be officially doing tech integration work this year, I know that I'll learn plenty that I can weave into my science work with teachers. I can't wait for day 2.